The Underground Culinary Tour

A new book by Damian Mogavero and Joseph D'agnese named "The Underground Culinary Tour" recently came across my desk. It promised to discuss the subject of metrics and how restaurant data mined from today's top restaurants is changing the playing field of what and how America dines. Analytics such as how many steaks a restaurant sells on weeknights versus weekends are nothing new. Most chefs or food and beverage directors worth their salt use these numbers as the basis for their weekly food orders. The author however has created a software package that translates these basic numbers as well as others that may be overlooked (such as how much soup you sell on a rainy day) into data that is real-time and informative.

The first half of this book reads like some of the texts I was assigned by professors in college. Specifically the texts that were written by the teachers themselves, and a forced purchase requisite of being in the class. While it does an adequate job of explaining the measurements used in restaurants, it is also a bit boring reading the author pat himself on the back repeatedly. He even goes so far as to insinuate that he was responsible for kale showing up on so many restaurant menus. Essentially as part of selling his software to big (often corporate-backed, ie $$$) restaurants, the author decided to start a "tour" of eating establishments that were quite popular with "foodies." The idea being that the CEO's and Food Network producer-types will get exposure to up-and-coming food trends and be able to cash in. These "foodies" ride around in a chartered bus from place to place sampling what the chefs have to offer. The tour is by invitation only (from the author) and he doesn't miss reminding the reader of this again and again. I found it very annoying. The term "foodie" is used throughout the book apparently as a way to show food knowledge, but in reality it is a distracting term that is not always appreciated.

Do you like food? Yes? Well what makes you less of a "foodie" than someone who also likes to eat? Sure you can take it to the next level and be passionate about, say, tacos, but the way the author speaks it's as though he and his friends are quite the food snobs. I should have known that one of the "chefs" profiled would be Guy Fieri. Given what the first half of the book covered, it made perfect sense to laud Fieri for an entire chapter and sing about what he has given to the food world. What many may not know, is that often Fieri is not using recipes in his restaurants that he developed. Fieri is just the name to lure people in to the establishment. Like when the Guy Fieri restaurant in Caesars Las Vegas' chef said "We have 5 months to put together a menu for Guy Fieri..." In essence it is the guy behind the Guy doing all the work (pun intended), maybe so the real Guy can focus on his game show hosting or jewelry line. No mention of the failed restaurants that Fieri has folded, one of them right here in Sacramento which closed without notice to any of the employees who showed up to work and found only a post-it note on the door informing them of their new-found unemployment.

At this point I had to put the book down without finishing. There is only so much I can take of pompous high-fiving that is self-serving to the author and his group of friends. I failed to see what makes any of this "underground", and the use of hipster-laden terminology is annoying and disingenuous. If you need a crash-course in basic restaurant workings or jargon, or you just want to hear about what a dozen people ate on a food tour, this book may have some use.